RebekahsZ Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 (edited) After 2 years of begging, I finally got a widow in my town to sell me her husband's project '75 280z. I found this car thru the widow's mother-in-law who commented on a picture in my exam room showing my daughter (Rebekah) standing next to my 240z at the drag strip way back when we did the science project that started me on the hybridZ bandwagon. I went and looked at the car, which had been in dry storage since 1989 and found the best set of fenders, floors, and rockers that I have EVER seen. The diff isn't even dirty! Some of the original paint had been sanded off on the top side of the car and left raw, so it had a little surface rust on those panels, but it was otherwise in original paint. The fuel injection system was half disassembled and the radiator was leaking. I offered her $300. She let me walk. I kept going by dropping notes in the mailbox to let her know I still was interested. Last month, mother-in-law has a second surgery with me (the other eye), and says: "You really should buy my daughters car from her." So I call her up. The car had been moved to a barn at her brother's house (the same brother who told her the car was worth $5,000 back when I offered her the $300). He had sprayed it with primer (no prep/no masking) to "protect it." It's when people lose interest in these rust magnets and put them someplace damp that we lose them, after they've had crap stacked all over them and gotten lots of trailer loading rash. I started to panic and offered her $1,500. She accepted. I took a day off and went out with the trailer. Way down in an Alabama holler in a lean-to with a dirt floor sat the Z laying on its belly with 4 flat tires. But it had only been out there for a season. So I put some of my tires on it, cut one brake drum off and loaded it up. Now it is in my garage getting cleaned out and lightened up to go into dry storage until I break 200mph in the blue 240z (my goal is do do that by 2020). I did a lot of cleaning out crap yesterday and hope to pull the motor/tranny today. I put new valve stems and 4 used tires on it and finished disassembling the brakes (which were largely seized by pad/shoe rust making it really hard to push around). Hopefully the diff will come out next week (you just can't get enough R200s) as well as any cloth or carpet in the car. I don't want to find a bunch of rats and rust in this thing when I get back to it. Then it is off to storage till I'm ready for it. The title states the plan for an 1/8-mile, 1/4-mile, 1-mile racer. BTW-the guys in the picture are all my local Z buddies; I'm on the other side of the camera, grinning from ear to ear! Edited February 21, 2016 by RebekahsZ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastTnZ Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 Persistence pays off! Way to go Keith! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alainburon Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 Looks like a solid car to start with and not at bad price either.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nathaninwa Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 Nice find, and cool project planned Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aero Z Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Looking forward to your build thread. Nice alabama find. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 Now that the engine and trans are out, I can see that it has been hit. It's pretty good work, but it looks like the entire passenger side inner fender has been removed and replaced. Amazingly the paint matches. What I was finding as rust is actually welding burn-thru. All the body panels line up and the gaps look good. I'm gonna keep it but I'm not as psyched as I was originally. Reality bites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Mileski Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 I think this whole purpose of this post was just so you could show us some more pictures of that killer lift in your garage and continue to make the rest of us jealous Mike Mileski Tucson, AZ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 Oh no, it's a legit post. Though I wish we were all in the same town so we could pool resources. My neighbors would love it if a bunch of Z-guys were hanging around my place lining the street with burn-out marks! You know, I probably wouldn't have picked up another S30 chassis if it weren't for this on-line community. I'm a street rodder at heart with the life-long dream of building customs and 30's Ford street rods and race cars. But I'm running our of "poop", ie energy this year and sticking to a chassis I know pretty well is likely a wise choice/compromise. Even with the lift to help me, I did a battery swap on the truck (the battery is under the bed) last night and my back was killing me when I finished. One of these days I'm gonna have to give this obsession up. The early years of fighting, falling out of planes, 10' unicycles and surfing are starting to catch up with me. Maybe someday I'll have a grandson to work along side of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stock Car Mafia Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Great find Keith! I don't think you can ever have enough of these cars Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texis30O Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 LOL, you old dirty bastard...... you know you have a love affair with these cars. Good looking find. Too bad the idiot who primed the car didn't have the where with all to prep or cover anything..... would have been cool to rock the original paint with some patina....... I just so happen to have another LS block sitting waiting for another Datsun...... ( of which I have found 2 in a package deal.... ) looks like we will be in the same boat soon..... Good luck on this new endeavor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 9, 2016 Author Share Posted March 9, 2016 Part of why I went ahead and moved on this chassis was to rescue it from the idiot who owned it. It was original paint except where his brother in law had taken a DA sander to it, then left it bare for 20 years. Now that he sprayed primer all over it "to protect it," I will have to clean all that gray crap off of it to find any rust I need to grind away. For those who don't know: primer isn't water proof and does nothing for rust! I'm hoping that it comes off easily, because where possible I would like to leave the original factory metal prep. The planned color scheme is all white-top-bottom-inside and out. Then to do vinyl wrap in the color of choice, probably a blue similar to my other car. What I don't know now is whether to get the existing rust blasted clean, then prime and paint just for rust protection while in storage, OR to just clean up any water trapping dirt, then store it in the dry and let prep wait until I get ready to really start on it. Before I start on this car I hope to take the '72 to 200mph. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texis30O Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I would do all prep and rust cleaning now. Rather than waiting, you don't know how the weather/humidity/climate will effect the car over time. I know it has lasted this long but I would hate to see it spread unknowingly while you have it locked up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 13, 2016 Author Share Posted March 13, 2016 Guys, I need a pep talk. The more I'm under this chassis, the more buyer's remorse I have due to the amount of work done (and still to do) forward of the firewall. From the firewall back (to include the battery tray), this is a straight, rust-free pristine chassis. But, probably early in its life, this car was hit really hard in the front. It is decent body-shop work with all the door gaps and fender gaps looking good, but the TC boxes got a pretty good whollap and the passenger side rail has waves all the way down it and there's a big stack of washers on one side of the passenger side LCA. It looks like the body shop put a jack between the frame rails back near the firewall and pushed them out from one another hard enough to crush them a little. I was really hoping to make this a 200-220mph car with a back-half treatment, but the front end was to remain stock S30 (with coilovers, springs, shocks, lotsa caster, etc). Now Im thinking the front frame rails are gonna need replacing. Can somebody talk me thru that a little? I really wasn't planning to tube chassis this whole car, and if it looks like that will be required, I may just try to sell this chassis off and get back to my deuce roadster land-speed dreams....if it's gonna be the same cost, learning curve and effort, I may as well go for the big dream. Can new metal be safely grafted into the frame rails and retain good structural integrity? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1969honda Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 Sounds to me like a good question to pose in the fabrication section with some pictures of the damage, might get a few more eyes on your problem and generate some good discussion over there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rturbo 930 Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 Pictures are worth a thousand words. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 13, 2016 Author Share Posted March 13, 2016 I can try. It's kinda hard to capture. Basically, I'd want to cut off everything forward of the firewall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stock Car Mafia Posted March 16, 2016 Share Posted March 16, 2016 I say live large and shoot for a full tube chassis with the body skin draped over. Either way I bet you can get your money back out of it if you decide to ditch and run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RebekahsZ Posted March 16, 2016 Author Share Posted March 16, 2016 Yeah, after spring break beach trip in a couple weeks I'm gonna buy a case of beer and get my two fabricators to come over with it up on the lift to advise me on which way to go: tube chassis or try to salvage what is there. If it was meant to be a street car I would just drive on like it is, but I'm hoping this car has the front tires coming down from above on a regular basis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disepyon Posted March 16, 2016 Share Posted March 16, 2016 200-220mph is fast, id feel much safer being in a tube chassis Z. Then again a beefed up stock z chassis I would think be good, though I know nothing about the limits of the stock Z chassis. Guess just comes down to budget, if your willing to open your wallet depending on cost to fix the front or tube it. Either way this is going to be a crazy cool build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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